How to be a Republican in Exile

Look at the data: Hillary Clinton will surely defeat him. But what does it say about the Republican Party that Donald Trump was ever able to take the lead?

And especially that he was able to gain more votes than Ted Cruz, a man of integrity, committed to preserving the Constitution, liberty, and nearly every conservative value that the GOP claims to stand for?

It is obvious: today the GOP does not stand for those values. Not for economic liberty. Not for limits on the power of the government. Not for the rights of the 3000 unborn children killed each day.

The facts are before us. On the whole, the Republican Party no longer shows much commitment to its professed principles. The Grand Old Party long ago moved leftward, abandoning conservative values. We should not be surprised that Donald Trump, a leftist vulgarian con artist, is able to take the lead. It is the natural consequence of the party having lost its soul. Donald did not crush that soul. It had already withered.

Those who call themselves Republicans now fall into three groups, in order of size:

1) Those who do not know what makes America great (Trump-supporters).

2) Those who do not care what makes America great (Sell-outs, career politicians, and liberals who call themselves Republicans).

3) Those few who do know, and care, what makes America great, but find themselves without a voice.

To this, what can we say? Ichabod: “There is no glory.”

The glory has departed from America, because the Constitution has been exiled.

Just as Samuel watched as the Ark of the Covenant, the center of God’s blessing to Israel, was carried away—so we have watched our Constitution taken into captivity. To lose the Constitution, and to lose the individual rights it protects, is indeed to lose the foundation of America’s exceptional glory.

What can the American do?

A Ted Cruz presidency would have been a blessing; but it would not have solved the deeper crisis: Americans are unfaithful. The party of Jackson may as well be the party of Lenin, and the party of Lincoln might as well be the party of Putin; for so few in either party talk of individual rights. As a people, we are unfaithful to our professed values, and perhaps unable even to name them.

Is there a path forward? Yes, and it is the path we have not tried. When all else fails, try acting on principle. Compromise does not work as a policy. For nothing is to stop the wicked from continually reframing the compromise in the direction of evil.

Stop compromising. Americans (those who deserve that name) must let all else know that we would rather see the Republican Party crumble and burn than be made into an accessory to wickedness.

The route to liberty, rights, and virtue need not go through the Republican Party. A party is only a means to an end. The Republic will be restored when Constitutional Conservatives and Christians in America make their deeper allegiance known.

The deeper allegiance is not to party, but to principle. And this commitment comes with teeth. To hold a principle is to declare, “I will not be moved. If you cross that line, I will not follow.” The answer to the never-ending pattern of compromise is simple: name our principles, and boycott any candidates who do not uphold them completely.

We do not need to abandon the name “Republican.” We need to reclaim it. For the word has a meaning, and we—those who believe in a Constitutional Republic—are that meaning.

Pretenders have appropriated our name and left us without a voice. But the solution is to courageously declare who we are and what has been done to us. To take back the Republic, we must declare what we are: Republicans in Exile. This name expresses our past identity, our present plight, and our intended future.

We who uphold the Constitution are now separate from the GOP as it currently stands. We are unwilling to support it until the time when those in leadership will embrace not merely our vote, but also our worldview.

The key to the Republican restoration is to identify what we together believe, and then with solidarity to refuse to compromise these beliefs by voting for any candidate not sworn to them.

What the Republican Party needs is not more compromise. It needs conviction and the willingness to expel those who do not affirm. Only when our party’s leftist infiltrators are sufficiently weakened and replaced will we as a united block choose to return. To restore virtue and statesmanship to American politics, nothing less will do.

We must put wickedness on notice: you cannot earn our votes by being the lesser of two evils. You earn our votes by upholding our principles; they are not negotiable. We will return—when you affirm. We will vote for you—when you represent us.

I suggest these as non-negotiables that any GOP candidate must affirm to earn a vote:

The Right to Life: Unborn children have rights. Human abortion must be federally banned.

The Right to Liberty: Businesses and individuals have the right to do business in a way that does not violate their worldview and convictions. They have the right to believe and to display any worldview they choose.

The Right to Property: Prosperity cannot be achieved by penalizing producers, nor by rewarding non-producers. Subsidies, entitlements, handouts, and trade barriers harm individuals and the economy as a whole. They must be eliminated.

We, the voters of principle, are unwilling to vote for any candidate who fails to affirm these three basic rights.

It may be many years before such a plan bears fruit. But we should be honest: how is our current plan working out?

When a sufficient number of people become Republicans in Exile, then the malignancy in the the party will have nothing left to feed on. The compromisers will grow weaker, while the people of principle grow strong until the time at which the hideous tumor of “compromise” may be removed. Then the Republican Party will be restored.

Until then, we wait. We withhold our support. Those who pretend to hold our values are as dangerous as those who openly oppose them. No longer will we make the mistake of voting for the “lesser of two evils,” for by that policy we have united virtue to vice and strengthened only the vice.

To succeed, a party must draw a line. It must fight. It must not yield. It must not tolerate members who compromise its foundation. When a party stands for nothing but the expediency of the moment, it will always lose. And it always has.

Those who do not see the long term, lose.

We, the Republican Exiles, are those who see the long term. And we will win. We will win by recognizing a simple truth: Statesmanship is of value only when a party unites behind a shared and unwavering purpose. The party that refuses to sacrifice its soul, wins.

There will come a day, when like David, we will delight to see the return of our nation’s glory. Lord, hasten that day. Americans, hasten the day. For the Founding Fathers were fewer than us, and greater were the odds. They won the victory because they did not compromise.